read.table with special chars

Hi all,
I am just starting with R and I have come across a problem which I guess
it is easy to solve. I am reading a table with read.table function.
This table contains chars which seem to be problematic when reading them
such as "'" and "#", if I remove these characters fromt the table by
hand the problem disappears. Otherwise, the whole table is not read,
since reading stops at the problematic tuple.
I have been looking in the ?read.table manual but have not found
anything. Is there any option to make R not interpret these characters?

Thanks in advance
Marc

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Marc Noguera i Julian, PhD
Genomics unit / Bioinformatics
Institut de Medicina Preventiva i Personalitzada
del C?ncer (IMPPC)
B-10 Office
Carretera de Can Ruti
Cam? de les Escoles s/n
08916 Badalona, Barcelona